Due to improvement in road conditions and living standards worldwide, it is now very common to see people travel long distances with their own vehicles. During long distance travel, a driver or a passenger often drinks various kinds of beverages and water in the vehicle. Therefore, a cup holder has been provided to accommodate and support a beverage can or cup. Generally, a cup holder is provided in a crash pad or a console box or installed in the vehicle. The cup holder can prevent beverage spill when there is a shaky movement of a vehicle by holding it in a secured beverage container (a beverage can or cup).
There have been manufactured various types of cup holders for a vehicle. For example, Japanese Patent laid-open No. 2002-331862 discloses a multifunctional tray detachable from a cup holder installed in a vehicle. Japanese Patent laid-open No. 2003-191783 discloses a cup holder having a plate-shape cup with an accommodating part which is integrally formed in a holder body and is elastically deformable. A hole is formed in the cup accommodating part for removing moisture collected in a cup. Japanese Patent laid-open No. 2002-274242 discloses a cup holder in which a hollow casing is installed in a vehicle, and a cup support member is accommodated in the hollow casing. Japanese Patent laid-open No. 2001-253289 discloses a cup holder in an armrest, where a tiltable cover is installed on an upper surface of a holder to prevent beverage spill.
FIG. 9 is a perspective view illustrating a type of a cup holder installed in a console box of a vehicle. The cup holder of the console box has an insertion groove 101 for accommodating a container 1 with beverage on an upper surface of the console box 100. A driver or a passenger can store his unfinished beverage in the above cup holder and continue to drink the stored beverage as desired. However, conventional cup holders were designed to simply accommodate a beverage can or cup with certain shapes and sizes and are therefore not able to accommodate a beverage can or cup with special sizes and shapes.
In fact, the conventional cup holders have been manufactured in a rather uniform fashion in accordance with a conventional console box, where the size of accommodation is already determined. Therefore, it has been almost impossible to securely support a beverage container of various sizes. Further, when a beverage container is not precisely fit to the size of a holder, the container can easily escape from the holder, so that the liquid content of the container is easily spilled. In addition, the above-described unexpected hazard may even lead to a vehicle accident.
Therefore, it has been required to develop a cup holder for a vehicle which can stably accommodate and store beverage containers of various sizes.